“It’s the first mission that’s fundamentally focused on the icy moons,” says Mark McCaughrean, senior advisor for science and exploration at ESA. “We now know these icy moons have very deep water oceans, and they could have the conditions for life to have developed.”
JUICE will map these oceans with radar devices, however McCaughrean says it is going to additionally be capable to search for potential biosignatures on the floor of Europa’s ice, which might rain down from plumes ejected into area from its subsurface ocean.
Later in 2023, ESA is scheduled to see one other main mission launch: its Euclid telescope, which was switched from a Russian rocket to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The telescope will probe the “dark universe,” observing billions of galaxies over a 3rd of the sky to raised perceive darkish matter and darkish vitality within the cosmos.
In October, NASA ought to launch a major science mission of its personal when Psyche takes flight following a delay from 2022. The spacecraft will head to 16 Psyche, an uncommon metal-rich asteroid that has by no means been seen up shut.
Quite a few different intriguing developments are anticipated in 2023. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is scheduled to return to Earth in September with items of an asteroid known as Bennu, which might supply new perception into the construction and formation of the photo voltaic system. Amazon goals to ship up the primary satellites for Project Kuiper in early 2023, the beginning of a 3,000-satellite orbiting communications community it hopes will rival SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. And a number of new rockets are set to launch, together with the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket (it is going to carry Astrobotic’s moon lander and a few of Amazon’s satellites) and presumably Blue Origin’s giant New Glenn rocket. Both are heavy-lift rockets that would take many satellites into area.
“There’s a huge swathe of activity,” says Cowart. “I’m very excited about this year.”
This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next sequence, the place we glance throughout industries, traits, and applied sciences to let you realize what to anticipate within the coming yr.